Psychological Factors in Sports Injury Rehabilitation

Abstract

Rehabilitation of sports injuries involves more than repairing the physical injury and regaining previous levels of physical performance. Optimizing injury rehabilitation also includes understanding the psychological impact of the injury on the athlete and how psychological factors may interact with the rehabilitation process. The purpose of this chapter is to review the research examining psychological factors related to sports injury rehabilitation.Major advances have been made in recent years in our understanding of the range of psychological factors associated with sports injury rehabilitation. In the early 1990s, Williams and Roepke et al. (1993) and Brewer (1994) made specific suggestions for improving the quality of psychological research on sports injury rehabilitation. Fortunately, many of these recommendations have been heeded. Specifically, responding to the recommendations made by Williams and Roepke, researchers have: (i) identified cognitive and emotional responses to injury that are characteristic of athlete populations (e.g. Leddy et al. and (vii) examined groups of athletes that are homogeneous with respect to injury type, severity and prognosis (e.g.

Measuring Postinjury Depression among Male and Female Competitive Athletes

“…This finding is in agreement with previous research demonstrating a similar temporal pattern of depression across multiple postinjury assessments using healthy control athletes (Leddy et al, 1994). Clinician-based depression ratings for athletes with injuries exceeded those of healthy athletes at 1week and remained elevated above healthy controls up to 1 month postinjury, which is consistent with previous research on depression (Leddy et al, 1994) as well as other forms of emotional distress (see reviews by Brewer, 2001;Brewer & Cornelius, 2003).…”

Pain and negative mood during rehabilitation after anterior cruciate ligament reconstruction: a daily process analysis

“…As with daily pain, negative mood decreased in a linear fashion during the early portions of post- operative rehabilitation. Such a trend is consistent with previous findings on emotional responses to ACL surgery in particular (Morrey et al, 1999) and sport injury in general (Brewer & Cornelius, 2003). Highlighting the utility of adopting a MLM approach to data analysis, the presence of cross-level interactions revealed that the decline in negative mood was more pronounced in participants high in athletic identity and low in optimism.…”

“…Personal variables refer to stable characteristics of athletes, whereas situational variables pertain to the more transitory circumstances and the social and physical environments encountered by athletes with injuries. Empirical support for the model has accrued, with a variety of personal and situational factors demonstrating associations with psychological responses to sport injury (Brewer & Cornelius, 2003). Positive correlations with negative post‐injury mood states have been documented for factors such as athletic identity (Brewer, 1993; Manuel et al, 2002), neuroticism (Grove & Bianco, 1999), and life stress (Brewer, 1993; Manuel et al, 2002; Albinson & Petrie, 2003).…”

Predictors of adherence to home rehabilitation exercises following anterior cruciate ligament reconstruction.

“…Despite the abundance of research on factors associated with sport injury rehabilitation adherence (Brewer & Cornelius, 2003), there have been few studies aimed at identifying predictors of adherence to postoperative ACL rehabilitation programs (e.g., Brewer, Cornelius, Van Raalte, Brickner, Sklar et al, 2004; Brewer, Van Raalte, Cornelius et al, 2000; Derscheid & Feiring, 1987; Pizzari et al, 2005; Treacy et al, 1997). Moreover, investigations of adherence to sport injury rehabilitation have targeted clinic-based components of rehabilitation to a greater extent than home-based components and have used research designs that have precluded examination of the relationship between situational factors and day-to-day fluctuations in adherence behavior.…”